Coming Home

Hans Jurgen sits chewing on his cornflakes. Everything is in order. The large glass dining room table has been meticulously set by Renate, the maid. Nothing is out of place. Belinda looks up from her magazine and looks over at her husband at the opposite end of the table. The meek smile she gives him accentuates the lines of creeping age on her sallow morning skin. Noting her bad posture, Hans Jurgen straightens in his chair. He does his best to respond to her show of good will.

"The coffee is good this morning," he volunteers.

"Yes, dear." She nibbles at her whole wheat cracker, takes a sip of her multi-vitamin juice, and absent-mindedly plays with the celery stalk on her plate. Hans Jurgen fails to see the reason for these diets of hers. If anything, Belinda is thin. Too many fashion magazines littering the place, he decides. Drinking his orange juice he watches her flick through a Vogue, stopping to examine the androgynous, sinewy form of some teenage model. Since their wedding she has very gradually lost her plump feminine figure. The former sensuousness of her buttocks and breasts has gone. Now she merely sags at front and back. On the collar of her white silk night-gown he-notices a stain of make-up, and casts his eyes down in abhorrence.

"And what do have planned for the day?", he asks.

"Oh, I'm meeting Hanna for lunch. I guess we'll do some shopping this afternoon."

"Good for you." He manages a smile. So she's meeting that slovenly Hannah bitch again! Great. He pictures his wife this evening, tipsy from a glass or two over her thirst, trotting up the drive laden with the spoils of the day's adventure, reeking of alcohol, cigarettes, and sweat. Hannah likes to dote on his wife, and there is always a mildly patronising tone in her voice when she speaks to her. Not that it really bothers him. He merely finds it difficult to understand what the two of them, the light-headed rich daughter and the arty-farty, pseudo-intellectual woman about town, see in each other.

The last of his cornflakes have turned to slush. He carefully wipes his hands with the fresh white serviette.

"I'll be dining with a client this evening. Be so good as to tell Renate she needn't prepare anything for me tonight," he announces as he gets up from the table.

"All right, dear,' not bothering to look up from the pictures of the latest bikini models.

Leaving the room Hans Jurgen winces at the prospect of her proudly displaying the newly purchased scraps of cloth, demanding his approval as she struts about in her new swim-wear, high heels clacking on the parquet of the lounge.

Upstairs in his bathroom he is relieved to be alone. He stands in front of the full-length mirror in his generously designed, spotless marble enclave and delights in the reflection of his athletic figure, the tanned, smooth skin from which every last hair has been removed. Hans Jurgen applies foam to his face and shaves, taking his time. He then showers for fifteen minutes, the powerful, hot stream of water massaging his flesh. Such scrupulous daily hygiene reassures him, is tantamount in his conception of efficiency and his role as Hans Jurgen Fleischhauer, director of Fleischhauer Advertising Agency. Following an inspection of his nails he applies moisturising cream to his face, rubs a little talcum powder here and there and then sprays on a few drops of Fahrenheit eau de Cologne. He works gel into his thick black hair, which he then brushes and blow-dries. From the huge stainless steel wardrobe in his dressing alcove he takes the day's fresh white shirt, a charcoal pin-striped suit, and a burgundy silk tie. To round the picture off he slips his silk socked feet into black Italian square-toed, patent leather shoes. For Hans Jurgen dressing is more than mere pleasure. It is a sacred, sensual act, a religious ceremony.

Downstairs he strides through the rooms, looking for Belinda. He finds her standing on the terrace in an old cashmere pullover, puffing on her morning cigarette. She turns and gives him an addled wave in response to his good-bye. Her lack of self-discipline infuriates him. These morning meetings have become a trial, something he must suffer and bear before the day can begin in earnest. Hence the greater is his pleasure at the sight of his gleaming black BMW 730i in the garage. Closing the door he lets his hands rest on the wheel, leans back and breathes in the clean smell of the leather and carpet. Twice a week Hans Jurgen has the car washed, vacuumed and polished. Yet more important than the appearance is the smell, the scent of the new, the unspoiled. The smell of purity. This is why Hans Jurgen never keeps a car for longer than a year before it is replaced by an new and undefiled vehicle straight off the production line.

The traffic is light as he leaves Marienburg and heads toward the SUdstadt. Belinda is forgotten. His thoughts turn to his work and the meeting with Glitzerberg, BLAZE's marketing manager, will determine the success of his latest brainchild. Whilst convinced of the brilliance of his latest concept, he is nevertheless apprehensive as to Glitzerberg's reaction.The continuing success of his enterprise depends on this one major account. His wealth has grown with the success of BLAZE, and with the increasing sales so too the pressure on him to perform.

Thinking back to the first BLAZE campaign, the harmless irony of the first billboard posters and glossy magazine ads, reassures him. A dynamic young artistic design manager at C&E, he had been able to convince first his bosses, and subsequently the BLAZE people of his concept of abstract association; an extremely simple and effective idea. One merely needed to connect a powerful image with any broadly marketable product, and public awareness is bound to be heightened to such a degree that the product will be purchased, no matter what the response to the image, the key being that the image need not relate to the product or product function in any way. He had been confident that the idea would prove particularly attractive to BLAZE, a manufacturer of Inferior quality goods.

At first the BLAZE marketeers had been sceptical although, Hans Jurgen likes to think, intrigued by the idea. Yet after long and intense presentations from Hans Jurgen, it was finally agreed to give the campaign a chance.

Huge billboard posters illustrating familiar historical events of the new age decorated Germany's city streets: Emaciated Sudanese women clasping pot-bellied, starving children to their dry breast flaps, flies swarming about and crawling over them. A video still of Bill Clinton testifying for a grand jury, staring out at the public, embarrassed and miserable. The third was a split panel; on the left a blurred photo of Lady Diana sunbathing topless on the deck of a yacht, and on the right the wreck of a Mercedes wrapped around a pillar in a tunnel. Printed across the top of each placard were the words 'BLAZE World.'

Within a month sales of BLAZE casual wear in Germany had risen by twenty percent. Plans were made to expand the campaign Europe-wide. And Hans Jurgen had been quick to take advantage of the situation. Dinners with Glitzerberg had been followed by negotiations with the BLAZE CEO which in turn resulted in a new contract.

Hans Jurgen left C&E to set up an agency of his own. The fee for his services was to depend on the success of the product, the new Fleischhauer Advertising Agency receiving payment proportionate to the increase in turnover of BLAZE products.

For the second campaign he hired an old school friend, an expert in computer graphics, to experiment with images scanned from other media or downloaded from the internet. Computerised photomontage offered a sheer inexhaustible range of possibilities, while the extreme modification of images cancelled out the problem of copyright. Clothing, the actual BLAZE product, was adopted as an element of the representation. A more direct approach could be applied, the key being contrast; aversion and attraction, desire and distaste.

Larger posters appeared; Siamese twins on a hospital bed wearing nothing but BLAZE toddler's shoes. A fifty-year-old man suffering from muscular atrophy pictured sitting in a wheelchair in the middle of a gym wearing BLAZE sport shorts and basketball boots. A skin and bone anorexic woman, too weak to stand, reclining on a deck chair with a multicoloured cocktail on the table at her side, wearing a BLAZE string bikini. Slaughtered Albanian children and infants laid out in rows in the dirt wearing BLAZE clothes in the colours of the Serbian flag....

Hans Jurgen is taken aback by his own brilliance. It all seems too simple. Simple juxtaposition. Pleasure and pain. The clean and the unsanitary. Glistening consumer life and fetid death. For Hans Jurgen bright new consumer goods filling shop displays, lining shelves in sweet virginal abundance represent everything that is good, all that bears value in society. It screamed virtue in that it mirrored the values required to keep the system in order. Sickness or handicap represented disorder, chaos, decay. The ugly, the unclean troubled him deeply. Thus he could also fully appreciate the impact his creations would have on the 'target group', the passive multitudes. He has surpassed simple irony, simple ambivalence. Shock ,them, disturb them, draw their attention away from the popular culture of youth and joy. Mirror their own putrefaction, their own private hell.

Today he will present Glitzerberg with his latest poster inspiration. The conventional execution scene; the pistol shot through the head of a kneeling prisoner. To his highly decorated khaki green uniform jacket the executioner wears BLAZE blue jeans. The dead prisoner, still on his knees, wears a bright yellow BLAZE T-shirt. His face is distorted, deformed slightly by the force of the blast.

At the Chlodwigplatz intersection he waits, impatiently watching the early morning commuters rushing for their trams. A woman dressed in filthy black rags limps over the crossing pushing a shopping trolley filled with tattered, brightly coloured shopping bags. He looks away...

The impeccable advertiser is no stranger to poverty. Indeed, he is convinced that his squalid youth formed him, made him the man he is today. His mother, struggling to support her illegitimate son, had striven for common decency. For her, cleanliness replaced all that she could not give him. His cheap clothes were always washed before he could even begin to soil them. The tiny apartment where they lived was always impeccably clean. The nightly washings were a ritual for them both. While she scrubbed him she would invariably speak to him of the importance of personal hygiene. And in the absence of any other strong maternal guidelines, these bathroom lessons eventually came to represent the child's basic values. Cleanliness represented the first step to success and became synonymous with efficiency.

It is why he is so distressed by the superficial and spiritless nature of his wife. Earlier in their relationship she had done her best to please him, but Belinda had never really appreciated the earnest nature of their little cleaning games. She had taken his obsession with personally soaping her in the shower as little more than an amusing quirk of his. And how it had pleased him to go through the ritual with her. Yet Belinda's scented nakedness between the sheets, pleasing as it was, had never quite been able to match the comfort of his mother's bed. Now the memories of awakening teen years, as the suckling snuggled up against the, full warmth of powdered maternal flesh, a scenario so pleasing to them both, are stronger than any desires that arose later. Her death left a void no woman would ever fill.

A bottle of chilled Dom Perignon in his hand, Hans Jurgen stands in a darkened doorway on Dagobertstrabe. Tired but elated he takes a deep breath and tries to collect his thoughts. The deal has just been closed. In a week the new BLAZE posters will decorate the cities, will shock, perturb. His idea will force awareness on millions of consumer zombies.

Upstairs on the third floor landing she is waiting for him, arms spread wide in greeting.

"Ha-Ju, my poor boy. You look frozen."

"Cora!" A genuine smile of relief breaks across his face. She is a big enveloping wench, ten years his senior. Locked in her embrace, he breathes in the perfume emanating from between her breasts, the perfume his mother used to wear. As usual Cora is dressed in '70s clothes, garishly coloured paisley woollen jacket and skirt with large, hideous plastic buttons, a wide collared synthetic blouse, thick tan stockings and plateau sandals. He rejoices at her tackiness.

She takes his hand and leads him to their haven.

"You have something to celebrate, Ha-Ju?"

"Do I ever." Hans Jurgen gives a high-pitched laugh. Cora responds with a smile and gently strokes his hair.

"Well run along and fetch the glasses like a good boy."

Scanning the kitchen, he is pleased to see that it is as clean and tidied as ever. He opens a cupboard, but stops before he takes the glasses, extracts his wallet from his jacket and places a 1000 DM note on the small Formica kitchen table. Then he carefully washes his hands.

Upon his return to the lounge Cora is seated on the couch, awaiting him. She has her legs crossed, causing her skirt to ride up. Her blouse is unbuttoned to give him a good view of her superb white cleavage, her breasts exuberant in her black lace bra.

The wire cork fastener proves more difficult to undo than Hans Jurgen expects. He breathes in deeply, trying to calm his nerves. She notices his hands trembling slightly.

"Relax, Ha-Ju, relax. There's a good boy," she murmurs soothingly.

His fervour in filling the glasses is extreme. To his intense distraction the delicate bubbles rise over the glass's rim and flow onto the table. Cora purses her lips in a sudden display of disapproval. In panic, Hans Jurgen darts to the kitchen, returning in a second with a tea-towel to wipe away the mess he has made. Oh, God. Where is my control? he thinks, struggling to regain his composure.

"Sit down here," she commands. He obeys at once. They take their glasses delicately by the stems and bring them together in a mock show of etiquette.

"Here's to us."

"To us," he answers.

Too nervous to savour the crisp dry effervescence, he downs the glass with two gulps and refills it, carefully this time. While he pours he feels Corals hand is on his thigh, stroking away the fear.

"Now, now. My poor boy. Why are you so upset?"

This is precisely the question Hans Jurgen is trying to answer for himself. He drinks his champagne, stares across at the painting on the wall opposite, a copy of Rembrandt's Danae reclining upon a luxurious bed in her cell, her plump white flesh bathed in Zeus's inseminating light. Cora once took the time to explain the iconography to him, but all the symbolism and storytelling, the Ovidian metamorphoses and divine fertilisation leaves Hans Jurgen cold. All that interests him is the plump baroque sensuousness.

He begins to feel the effects of the drink, which excites rather than soothes him. Turning to his mistress he lays his head on her breast, again delighted by the scent filling his head with the past. For a moment he is utterly lost in the bliss of contact taking him back to the time of his dreams.

Irrepressible emotion wells up in his chest. He utters something between a groan and a sigh. In response Cora gathers him in her arms and rocks him gently from side to side.

"There, there, my darling boy. Everything is all right. You have been good. You have done well."

Hans Jurgen responds. He thaws, is calmed, relaxes in the cradle of her body. Eventually he draws back slowly and carefully extracts her breasts from their lace cups. Tears of gratitude well up in his eyes as she takes his head in her hands and guides his lips to her nipple. Ulysses has returned home from his trials and tribulations, has once again set foot upon mother earth.

Hans Jurgen lies naked on the hard mattress, a plastic sheet protecting the bed linen, and stares up at their reflection in the ceiling mirrors. Hans Jurgen's excitement is extreme, his body tensed to breaking point, ready to explode. Hans Jurgen is in heaven. Soon, very soon Hans Jurgen is to be rewarded for his industriousness. Cora will lower her amazing body down, will squat over him and spread her warm, reeking, liquid warmth over him like a blanket of silk. And he will finally come. She will destroy him, create him anew.

Before he leaves her Hans Jurgen will have to wash again, more thoroughly this time.

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